1. Technical Field
This invention relates to smart card applications and, more particularly, to a network arrangement to provide access to an architecture that supports a variety of advanced smart card applications.
2. Background Art
The present telephone network including the copper, fiber optic, and wireless communications infrastructure, provides a potential robust architecture for data card or smart card applications.
The term “data card” as used herein includes financial cards such as credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards, as well as non-financial data cards such as energy company cards, department store cards, car rental cards, hotel cards and airline cards. Data cards can also include driver's licenses, building security cards, and personal identification cards. Data cards commonly have a magnetic strip containing a limited amount of read-only data. Such data cards are very common and most people carry numerous cards to function in modern society.
Partly due to the number and types of data cards, substitute, replacement, or consolidation cards have been developed allowing multiple card issuers to be represented with a single data card, thereby allowing consumers to carry just one card for several types of transactions including those identified above. Such cards have been referred to as “smart” cards. The magnetic-striped data cards, which are in general use, have limited capabilities. Smart cards, however, differ from data cards in that they can hold much more information and often include some “intelligence” such as a microprocessor or the like.
While much prior work is focused on the design of smart cards, smart card readers, and applications for smart cards, there has been much less focus on the integration of a centralized server architecture or a network arrangement for multiple smart card applications.
In this regard, the present invention describes a network arrangement which is readily accessible from different types of smart card terminals supporting various smart card applications. The network connections are facilitated by the present telephone network or an interconnected network of computers such as the Internet. With a centralized server architecture, data related to an individual can be accessed by an individual smart card, predefined groups of smart card users, or the general public.